120 Inspirational Quotes About Laughter

[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand. — Mark Twain

A good laugh heals a lot of hurts. — Madeleine L’Engle

A good laugh is a mighty good thing, a rather too scarce a good thing. — Herman Melville

A good laugh is sunshine in the house. — William Thackeray

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. — Phyllis Diller

A smile starts on the lips, a grin spreads to the eyes, a chuckle comes from the belly; but a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, overflows, and bubbles all around. — Carolyn Birmingham

A well-balanced person is one who finds both sides of an issue laughable. — Herbert Procknow

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand. — Mark Twain

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine. — Lord Byron

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. — W. H. Auden

An optimist laughs to forget; a pessimist forgets to laugh. — Tom Nansbury

And keep a sense of humor. It doesn’t mean you have to tell jokes. If you can’t think of anything else, when you’re my age, take off your clothes and walk in front of a mirror. I guarantee you’ll get a laugh. — Art Linkletter

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. — Friedrich Nietzsche

As soap is to the body, so laughter is to the soul. — A Jewish Proverb

As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it. — Lao Tsu

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities. — Jean Houston

Cancer is probably the unfunniest thing in the world, but I’m a comedian, and even cancer couldn’t stop me from seeing the humor in what I went through. — Gilda Radner

Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark in one another. — Kenny Ausubel

Earth laughs in flowers. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even the gods love jokes — Plato

Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real Sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.” — Mevlana Rumi

From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere. — Dr. Seuss

God has a smile on His face. — Psalm 42:5

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. — Voltaire

Grim care, moroseness, and anxiety—all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. Mirth is God’s medicine. — Henry Ward Beecher

He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh. — Koran

He that is of a merry heart has a continual feast. — Proverbs 15:15

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise. — William Blake

He who laughs, lasts! — Mary Pettibone Poole

Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer. — Reinhold Niebuhr

Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it. — James Langston Hughes

I commend mirth. — Ecclesiastes 8:15

I have always felt that laughter in the face of reality is probably the finest sound there is and will last until the day when the game is called on account of darkness. In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can. — Linda Ellerbee

I have not seen anyone dying of laughter, but I know millions who are dying because they are not laughing. – Dr. Madan Kataria

I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable. — Viktor Frankl

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world. — Peter Ustinov

I will follow the upward road today; I will keep my face to the light. I will think high thoughts as I go my way; I will do what I know is right. I will look for the flowers by the side of the road; I will laugh and love and be strong. I will try to lighten another’s load this day as I fare along. — Mary S. Edgar

If Laughter cannot solve your problems, it will definitely DISSOLVE your problems; so that you can think clearly what to do about them – Dr. Madan Kataria

If you are happy and people around you are not happy, they will not allow you to stay happy. Therefore much of our happiness depends upon our ability to spread happiness around us. – Dr. Madan Kataria

If you become silent after your laughter, one day you will hear God also laughing, you will hear the whole existence laughing — trees and stones and stars with you. — Osho

If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you’re old. — Edgar Watson Howe

If you have no tragedy, you have no comedy. Crying and laughing are the same emotion. If you laugh too hard, you cry. And vice versa. — Sid Caesar

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know the man, don’t bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you’ll get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man…All I claim to know is that laughter is the most reliable gauge of human nature. — Feodor Dostoyevsky

If you would not be laughed at, be the first to laugh at yourself. — Benjamin Franklin

It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down and spreads to your hips. — Fred Allen

Laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy. — John Cleese

Laughter has no foreign accent. — Paul Lowney

Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.” — Norman Cousins

Laughter is a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside. — Zero Mostel

Laughter is God’s hand on the shoulder of a troubled world. — Bettenell Huntznicker

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks. — Henri Bergson

Laughter is the foundation of reconciliation. — St. Francis de Sales

Laughter is the loaded latency given us by nature as part of our native equipment to break up the stalemates of our lives and urge us on to deeper and more complex forms of knowing. — Jean Houston

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. — Victor Borge

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. — Victor Hugo

Laughter opens the lungs, and opening the lungs ventilates the spirit. — Unknown

Laughter serves as a blocking agent. Like a bulletproof vest, it may help protect you against the ravages of negative emotions that can assault you in disease. — Norman Cousins

Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile—smile five times a day at someone you don’t really want to smile at all—do it for peace. So let us radiate peace…and extinguish in the world and in the hearts of all men all hatred and love for power. — Mother Teresa

Let your heart by merry. — Judges 19:6

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. – George Bernard Shaw

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can. — Danny Kaye

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Continue to learn. Play with abandon. Choose with no regret. Laugh! Do what you love. Love as if this is all there is. — Mary Anne Radmacher-Hershey

Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds and glitter for the moment. Cheerfulness keeps up daylight in the mind, filling it with steady and perpetual serenity. — Samuel Johnson

Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable than risk being happy. — Robert Newton Anthony

No matter what your heartache may be, laughing helps you forget it for a few seconds. — Red Skelton

Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the one most surely wasted. — Sebastien Roch

On average, an infant laughs nearly two hundred times a day; an adult, only twelve. Maybe they are laughing so much because they are looking at us. To be able to preserve joyousness of heart and yet to be concerned in thought: in this way we can determine good fortune and misfortune on earth, and bring to perfection everything on earth. — I Ching

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. — Frederick W. Nietzche

Prepare for mirth, for mirth becomes a feast. — William Shakespeare

Remember this: very little is needed to make a happy life. — Marcus Aurelius

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. — Voltaire

The beauty of the world has two edges; one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. — Virginia Woolf

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up. Mark Twain

The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow. — Socrates

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. — Kahlil Gibran

The greatest prayer you could ever pray is to laugh every day. — Ramtha

The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing. — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. — Mark Twain

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. — E E Cummings

The old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot, and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a man’s pocket, because it cut down the doctor’s bills like everything. — “Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain

The person who can bring the spirit of laughter into a room is indeed blessed. — Bennett Cerf

The person who has a sense of humor is not just more relaxed in the face of a potentially stressful situation, but is more flexible in his approach. — John Morreall

The point is seeing that THIS — the immediate, everyday and present experience — is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe. I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter… — Alan Watts

The size of a man’s understanding can be justly measured by his mirth. — Samuel Johnson

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation. — Anne Rice, Taltos

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people – that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. The wellspring of laughter is not happiness, but pain, stress, and suffering. — James Thurber

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool. — George Santayana

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy. — Anne Frank

Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either. — Golda Meir

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it. — Charlie Chaplin

Total absence of humor renders life impossible. — Colette

True humor springs more from the heart than from the head; it is not contempt, its essence is love. — Thomas Carlyle

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. — Mark Twain

We are all here for a spell. Get all the good laughs you can. — Will Rogers

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh. — Agnes Repplier

We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we are happy because we laugh. — William James

We look before and after, and pine for what is not; our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught; our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. — Percy Shelley

We women take love too seriously. Men wish to be loved with laughter, not with sighing. So laugh, sweetheart, laugh, or soon you may be weeping. — Minna Thomas Antrim

What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. — Reinhold Neibuhr

When humor goes, there goes civilization. — Erma Bombeck

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl. — Sir James Matthew Barrie

When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves. — Katherine Mansfield

When you do laugh, open your mouth wide enough for the noise to get out without squealing, throw your head back as though you were going to be shaved, hold on to your false hair with both hands and then laugh till your soul gets thoroughly rested. — Josh Billings

When you laugh, aside from the endorphin rush, there’s also a spiritual opening. You’re not so tight inside yourself. That opening I’ve found to be a real gift, in people being able to absorb spirituality. —Rabbi Sydney Mintz

When you laugh, you get a glimpse of God. — Merrily Belgum

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky. — Buddha

Wit is the key, I think, to anybody’s heart, because who doesn’t like to laugh? — Julia Roberts

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. — William Shakespeare

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. — Abraham Lincoln

Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been. — Mark Twain

You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing. — Michael Pritchard

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh — at yourself. — Ethel Barrymore

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Sebastien Gendry is a speaker, trainer and consultant, expert in laughter for wellness and wellbeing. He played a major role in introducing Laughter Therapy in North America, Russia, Palestine and other countries, inspired the creation of 100s of Laughter Clubs worldwide, and is the creator of the Laughter Wellness method. He has been offering a variety of laughter programs every year on three to four continents for the past decade and continues to do so.